Nurse practitioners provide a more comprehensive range of services than RNs. Patients often see them in lieu of general practitioners for regular wellness visits. This gives the nurse more responsibility—and usually, more money. It gives the patient more options. Studies consistently show that people achieve better healthcare outcomes when they feel they have autonomy.
But what do hospitals get out of it? Healthcare systems certainly care about patient results but at the end of the day, they make their decisions by following cost-to-benefit analysis. Processes that any big business would use.
What kind of ROI do nurse practitioners provide? Let’s get into it.
Do Nurse Practitioners Provide a Good ROI?
The short answer is yes. While they cost more than an RN they are still significantly less expensive than a doctor—sometimes by a factor of several hundred thousand dollars per year. No, hospitals can’t replace all of their physicians with NPs. However, if a GP retires, for example, or maybe they churn out a couple of nurses, an NP may fill those gaps at a more affordable price than the alternative.
Many of the other ROI benefits are even more impactful—though harder to notice at strictly a glance.
In the next few headings, we will take a look at how NPs provide value beyond direct payroll savings. NPs often show impressive metrics in patient education effectiveness, preventative care implementation, and relationship-building with patients.
Saving Time
It’s worth keeping in mind that nurse practitioners can enter the field much sooner than GPs. Where a doctor might not even begin their career until their early to mid-thirties—assuming they take no gap years in their education—NPs can be ready to go after only two years of graduate school. This accelerated timeline allows healthcare systems to respond more quickly to staffing shortages and changing community needs.
Obviously, it’s because their training is so much less extensive that they can’t do everything a doctor can. Still, they are able to perform a wide range of basic physician responsibilities giving MDs more time to focus on other tasks.
Local healthcare systems meanwhile have a more accessible supply of high-quality medical professionals. Added bonus? Where about 50% of RNs leave the profession, NPs have a much higher retention rate. This improved retention translates to greater continuity of care for patients and reduced recruitment and training costs for healthcare facilities.
More Patient Revenue
Again, it’s a little gross to think of healthcare this way, but hospitals need volume just like any other business. And like any other business, the amount of “customers,” they can accommodate is subject to certain capacities. One of them—personnel. In other words, hospitals that have NPs on the staff can see more patients. The more patients they see, the more revenue they produce. When properly utilized, NPs can significantly increase the number of patients a practice can serve each day.
What’s more, because NPs often see patients on a recurring basis, it becomes predictable revenue. This predictability allows healthcare systems to better forecast budgets and staffing needs, creating more stable financial operations. Patients with chronic conditions who maintain regular appointments tend to have fewer emergency visits, shifting revenue from costly acute care to more manageable preventative services.
Reducing Hospital Re-admissions
Nurse practitioners help improve healthcare outcomes for patients by both alleviating stress on the overall system and freeing up physician time for more complicated cases. They also help communities have wider access to preventative care which can further improve long-term outcomes. The same way your car does better with regular maintenance than it would if you brought it in only when something is smoking, so too does the human body thrive when it is receiving regular attention.
Good for the patients, ok, but what’s the dollar and cents value of better healthcare outcomes? Hospitals are businesses, after all. Hospital readmissions cost the U.S. healthcare system approximately $26 billion annually, with Medicare penalties for excessive readmissions further impacting financial sustainability.
Beyond the financial burden, readmissions consume valuable bed space and clinical resources that could serve new patients, creating bottlenecks that reduce overall system efficiency and effectiveness.
How to Become a Nurse Practitioner
So what does it take to join the rewarding and fast-paced world of advanced practice nursing? To get started you will first need to get your undergraduate degree. All NPs begin with a BSN. Most will spend a year or two minimum working as a nurse to figure out what interests them. Many nursing organizations recommend getting at least 1-2 years of bedside experience before applying to NP programs.
From that point, they can enter a graduate program that is catered to their particular healthcare interest. The graduate classes generally take only 2-3 years, no cakewalk, to be sure, but relatively streamlined in the greater context of healthcare. Common NP specialties include family practice, pediatrics, psychiatric/mental health, adult gerontology, and women’s health.
After completing their master’s or doctoral program, candidates must pass a national certification exam in their specialty area before applying for state licensure as an advanced practice registered nurse.
Conclusion
As a prospective nurse practitioner, you also have an ROI to consider. The cost of your degree is weighed against the benefits of the position. The return on that one is a home run. A first-year NP can make up to $120,000 while a rookie nurse takes home less than half of that.
If it costs $50,000 to get the credential—a reasonable if possibly inflated estimate—you’ll recoup the cost in one year.
Naturally, most nurses don’t really think about the job in those terms. If you wanted to be rich you probably would have chosen an entirely different career path.
Here’s another return to keep in mind—satisfaction. You’ll increase your earnings and wind up with a job that you like more. What could be better than that? If you are interested in joining the fast-growing world of NP work start researching eligible programs today.
